Richard Gonzales

Steve Barrett
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Richard Gonzales is NPR's National Desk Correspondent based in San Francisco. Along with covering the daily news of region, Gonzales' reporting has included medical marijuana, gay marriage, drive-by shootings, Jerry Brown, Willie Brown, the U.S. Ninth Circuit, the California State Supreme Court and any other legal, political, or social development occurring in Northern California relevant to the rest of the country.

Gonzales joined NPR in May 1986. He covered the U.S. State Department during the Iran-Contra Affair and the fall of apartheid in South Africa. Four years later, he assumed the post of White House Correspondent and reported on the prelude to the Gulf War and President George W. Bush's unsuccessful re-election bid. Gonzales covered the U.S. Congress for NPR from 1993-94, focusing on NAFTA and immigration and welfare reform.

In September 1995, Gonzales moved to his current position after spending a year as a John S. Knight Fellow Journalism at Stanford University.

In 2009, Gonzales won the Broadcast Journalism Award from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. He also received the PASS Award in 2004 and 2005 from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for reports on California's juvenile and adult criminal justice systems.

Prior to NPR, Gonzales was a freelance producer at public television station KQED in San Francisco. From 1979 to 1985, he held positions as a reporter, producer, and later, public affairs director at KPFA, a radio station in Berkeley, CA.

Gonzales graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in psychology and social relations. He is a co-founder of Familias Unidas, a bi-lingual social services program in his hometown of Richmond, California.

Americans continue to be divided along partisan lines over Obamacare, with an overwhelming percentage of Democrats favoring it and an equal share of Republicans having unfavorable views, according to a newly released Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

But when it comes to an actual gutting of Obamacare, there's doesn't appear to be a lot of support.

The election of Donald Trump has sent shock waves through civil rights organizations, including among LGBT activists. They say they fear a rollback in the progress their movement made during the Obama administration. Meanwhile, opponents of gay and lesbian rights also see a shift coming with the Trump administration.

For the past several years, conservatives in the culture wars — those who have felt that their views on same-sex marriage, for example, were under attack — now say they have something to cheer about.

The Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 9-3 in Game 6 of the World Series at Progressive Field in Cleveland. The best-of-seven Series is now even at three games each. The decisive Game 7 will be played Wednesday in Cleveland.

The Cubs were led by starter Jake Arrieta, who gave up two runs and three hits in five-plus innings. He struck out nine and walked three Cleveland batters. He also had the luxury of watching teammate Addison Russell collect six RBIs, with a two-run double in the first inning and a grand slam in the third.

In California, the city of Oakland was the first to regulate and tax medical marijuana dispensaries. Now, some city leaders see the industry's profits and are proposing to take a bigger piece of the action. The Oakland City Council is voting later this month on a pot profit-taking plan.

The Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 5-1 in Game 2 of the World Series. The best-of-seven Series is tied one game apiece as the action moves to Chicago for Game 3 on Friday.

Cubs starting pitcher Jake Arrieta disarmed the Indians' batters, holding them hitless until the sixth inning, when they scored their only run. The Indians stranded two runners in the seventh inning, a runner in the eighth inning and another in the ninth. But they never mounted a real challenge to Cubs relievers Mike Montgomery or Aroldis Chapman.

Another pharmaceutical company is coming under fire for boosting the price of one of its drugs. Two lawmakers are demanding to know the justification for a more than $80,000 price hike for a year's supply of a drug that treats leukemia patients.

As NPR's Alison Kodjak reports:

"The drug is called Iclusig and it was approved in 2012 to treat a subset of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.

Retired Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements to federal authorities. The investigators were looking into a leak of classified information about a secret cyberattack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

The plea came in a brief appearance in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The chairman and chief executive of Wells Fargo & Co., John Stumpf, has resigned effective immediately in the aftermath of a scandal over the bank's past practice of secretly selling services to unsuspecting customers.

Stumpf will be replaced by President and Chief Operating Officer Timothy Sloan, long considered to be Stumpf's eventual successor.

Samsung Electronics is permanently ending production of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, after trying for more than a month to solve the problem of the device catching fire.

Samsung, the global leader in smartphone production, announced Monday that it is suspending sales of the smartphone after reports that some replacement devices were also spontaneously igniting. On Tuesday, Samsung announced that it is halting production, and a spokesman told NPR's Elise Hu that production will not resume.

The United States has officially blamed Russia for the hacking of computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations, and it accused Moscow of trying to interfere with this year's election process.

As a young boy, Polish-born Yisrael Kristal looked forward to turning 13 when he could celebrate his bar mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ritual. But that was 1916 and World War I crushed that hope. Little did he know that he would wait a century for that ceremony.

Pope Francis has made good on a promise to go to the central Italian region hardest hit by the devastating earthquake that struck in August. He arrived Tuesday without warning to console survivors and urge them to press forward.